Electric Confetti shop history and evolution
Electric Confetti is a family-owned art and design studio specialising in the modern medium of LED neon, founded by me, Natalie Jarvis, in 2015. Until this point, my career was focused on children’s publishing, working as a designer and illustrator of children’s books.
As a child, I grew up working in my father’s antique shop in New Zealand on weekends and after school. This sparked a passion for vintage graphics and signage, particularly neon.
Many years later, after managing an art gallery, working in publishing, and looking for neon artwork for my first child’s nursery, all roads lead to me discovering and researching the medium of LED neon. From here, Electric Confetti was born. In this time, Electric Confetti swiftly grew from a hobby business in 2015 to an enterprise employing a staff of six.
We went from a small home-based office, to a small shop down the road, to a larger shop still in the area and finally Sandringham. Each shop has become bigger + brighter. It’s easy to see why – it’s full to the brim with bright lights, colour, and sparkle. A couple from Hong Kong planned a trip to Melbourne specifically to visit our store. It’s been in multiple photoshoots, in the background of music video clips (even featured in a scene behind Nina from Offspring!). This long ago planted an idea of creating something more for the fans, somewhere where we can display and create spaces freely with further engagement and to meet demand.
As we outgrew our second shop location in Brighton, I spotted a super cute shop in an area further along the beach called Sandringham. I fell in love with the facade in the photo – it was a little bit vintage (harks back to my love for vintage, as my father owned an antique shop in New Zealand and I worked there as I grew up). I knew we had to have it as our shop space. Two months later, we were in, and the works have begun to convert the 2 bedroom apartment above into an air bnb. (Not so) luckily COVID forced us all into lockdown, so this gave us the chance to get stuck into doing all the areas in our new space. The shop front, the back and the upstairs bnb!
First things first, we started on the shop front! Initially I was going to do a blue colour, but I wasn’t sure it was quite right, and after some consideration (and realising I didn’t even know why we’d chose to go with blue) we reverted to our pink and couldn’t be happier. We installed shimmer panels, which we sell, on the external facade, they’re a great way to catch the eye and really add an extra touch to the shop, as if it wasn’t busy enough hehe.
We can’t wait to keep you updated on the shop, we’ve got a lot more planned of the facade (think more signs!) It’s looking pretty fab so far though and brings so much joy to the local community, as well as the wider, insta-based one! In the meantime we’re busy working away on the air bnb upstairs as well as the hustle and bustle of the day to day work we do. Oh and did I mention 4 kids 7 and under at home.
